> Reuters also reported that Meta internally projected in 2024 that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from running ads for scams and banned goods, internal company documents show.
At $employer we're CONSTANTLY fighting fake ads cloning our brand. Their various brand protection features seem deliberately inept and ineffective.
I couldn't find anything else to do exactly what I wanted (or wasn't just a blatent rugpull towards "enterprise pricing" waiting to happen) so I slopped together an MCP Proxy that uses FastMCP to proxy a list of upstream MCPs behind Entra oauth, with CEL-expressions for per-tool RBAC.
The peace of mind it brought not trusting other people's slopped out MCPs to do the right thing with authentication is immense.
It's internal only, but it was a Fable 5 one-shot (3 shot if you count a second prompt to generate the Helm Chart and docs site) that you could DIY because the FastMCP library is extremely sensible and well-documented.
Nice. Basically, I see 3 ways the MCP ecosystem converging
- Centralized, well trusted sources for MCP servers
- Technical people like you creating their own, private MCPs for specific use cases
- An MCP governance layer that brings a bit of sense into this new world
Otherwise, it’s a security time bomb. We already see MCP specific attacks out in the wild.
MCP is basically web services for AI tools, thus the same care should be in place for security, unfortunely that isn't what happens, thus as usual DevSecOps will have lots of fun.
100%!! All AI tooling (MCPs, skills, models etc) has to go through the same scrutiny applied to any other web service. But as always, security is an afterthought that comes back to bite.
"Extreme Heat" seems to be 37-40 degrees Celsius which is bafflingly mundane to me as an Australian who grew up in rural New South Wales. We'd pack 30 kids and a teacher into an un-airconditioned classroom with just a ceiling fan and the windows open in that temperature.
I imagine the buildings there just aren't built to support that heat plus the body height of hundreds or thousands of attendees?
People tend to rely on air temperatures when in reality the lethality of heat is probably more linked to the wet-bulb temperature.
The human body has a natural resting temperature of about 37°C, and metabolism of course generates more heat constantly, so we constantly have to shed that heat. When the temperature is low, we can rely purely on conducting the heat into the atmosphere to shed the heat (which is probably why internal body temperature is higher than the atmosphere!). At higher temperatures, conduction is less efficient, or sometimes even adds heat load into the system (at above 37°C, obviously), so we start relying on evaporative cooling (i.e., sweat) to cool us down.
The wet-bulb temperature is the minimum temperature that can be reached by evaporative cooling. So when the wet-bulb temperature is in the mid-30s °C… people start to become literally unable to regulate their core body temperature, and the heat is lethal. Wet-bulb is largely a combination of the temperature and humidity, but unfortunately, it's not typically reported in most weather reports, so people go off of the air temperature (and the humidity) that is reported.
Which is a long-winded way of saying "the humidity matters a lot for how much a given temperature is bearable." I don't know what environment you come from purely by rural New South Wales, but my first guess is the semi-arid and thus low-humidity bush regions of the state, which means the apparent wet-bulb temperature of 37-40°C would be a lot lower than the equivalent 37-40°C for most of the humid continental climates of Europe.
Dew point is a much better measure of the oppressive, muggy, sweltering feeling than humidity. The dew point in Australia ranges in the 5ºc - 15ºc range at which 30ºc after sunset feels vastly different, way cooler than South East Asia where the dew point is constantly above 24ºc.
TIL. I see that in my country (Uruguay) the Dew point in summer is usually above 20ºc and some peaks above 26ºc (when temperature is above 30ºc with high humidity), no wonder it feels hot and oppressive (it's always humid, too).
There are plenty of humid, warm cities in the world. Not so many humid, cold cities. It's easy to check, usually the (English) wikipedia article of a city will have a Climate table with month-by-month data. On the winter months, Montevideo gets around 80% average humidity. I challenge you to look for cities that get as cold, but are more humid than Montevideo in the winter. You can find some (I think Auckland is one), but they are very rare.
Greetings from the Shoelace neighborhood, Montevideo
> The total heat transfer of a human is the same as the metabolic heat production, and is approximately 100 watts, or 400 kJ/hr, or 60-70 kcal/hr at rest.
It occurs by:
> You sweat a lot more due to the higher humidity.
It may be that you sweat the same at 30C (i.e., water coming out of your pores), it's just that with higher humidity the sweat cannot evaporate and collects on your skin in beads, which you notice.
Looking just at ambient air temperature is an easy mistake to make. I used to be like that, always surprised why people whine so much near the coast in winter with their comfortable numbers and thinking I’m superhuman compared to them. I stopped when I learned first-hand that their negative 17 degrees feel as bad as our negative 30.
If you live in a town in New South Wales where the average humidity is less than 50% in the wettest (or, should I say, least dry) season, you might not understand what it feels like in London where the average doesn’t dip below 65% any time of year.
Today London will feel at least 4 degrees Celsius hotter than Hong Kong. The latter is already an extremely unpleasant place to be in these conditions (and had in fact its own very hot weather warning issued), and unlike London it has a very strong culture of air conditioning.
4 degrees might seem like not a lot, but heat extremes are a tricky beast. Once your body cannot evaporate heat fast enough, you’re literally toast.
I'm in the northeastern US and it's very common for weather reporting to include the Heat Index (https://www.weather.gov/ama/heatindex) which takes temperature and humidity into account.
Humidity makes a big difference in how stressful the temperature is (wet bulb temperature accounts for this somewhat). The age of the attendees and the tendency of the building to heat would also be factors.
As an Aussie who's spent time in Germany in one of these heat waves, this is definitely one aspect. But it's not just "keep the heat in". They are designed with huge thermal mass, so once warm they stay warm for a day or so.
When the heat wave struck, initially that thermal inertia works in your favour as the cool building keeps the interior cool. But after a day or two it heats up. Once that happens, the temperature at night doesn't drop. As you say, ventilation is not good, so the humidity rises too. The thing becomes an overnight sauna.
After one night of this, I went looking for a fan. In my Australian home, every room has a ceiling fan. In this German dwelling (rented by my daughter, an Aussie, for the past few years) there wasn't a single fan in the house, and worse none of the nearby shops sold fans. It looked to me like there was no "social knowledge" of fans or how to handle heat in general. I eventually got a fan off Amazon, who thankfully delivered the next day.
We were also there in another year in winter. These same buildings were amazing the cold. They could maintain a cosy inside temperature with very little extra energy. But geeze, you don't want to be in one in a heatwave that goes on for days.
Still doesn’t solve the cost factor. If you don’t have the money you don’t have the money. And if you barely have the money you’re probably going to take the risk because the risk is still very low.
It's not just cost. Many people in Germany claim they get sick or experience neck pain the instant they stand under an AC. I cannot relate at all and I'm very puzzled, but at the same time I don't want to deny their experience.
I'm Lithuanian and that's my pet peeve when making fun of my culture. I think it comes from homeopathy BS that has roots in Germany.
Funny enough Germans appreciate good ventilation, but here we have following: wind outside - ok, same wind inside (draft) - you killing me. Always wear slippers inside, protect your feet and neck from coldness. Avoid AC at all costs, especially bad if it blows right into your face. Also no fans right into your face or body. Wet hair - do not under any circumstances go outside. Even the most respected people I know fall into this trap.
Possibly some confusion comes from rhinorrhea - people mix up these symptoms with actual disease. And most ironically lack of appropriate ventilation increases spread of respiratory infections.
Last decade+ we had a bit of a HRV fad, wonder if that is reflected in some stats. Anecdotally I heard people shut these off to save power and open window instead...
That doesn't matter for portable AC. Most people build a plexiglass or foamboard plug for the open window. Some products are sold already set up like this. If you can fit a casement AC that also probably doesn't matter. You can probably remove the window too I'm guessing.
Portable AC exists and people do use it, but it's loud and awkward with casement windows. This is a bandaid solution at best. Yet, I've seen them sold out in the summer, so people do use them.
You'll probably want a split unit. Minimum $600 including install in Eastern Europe, but more likely to be over 1k.
Extrapolate salaries, cost of living and that's more like 3k in your money.
That said magic happens when government subsidizes things. Friend spent 8k euro for 10kW solar + 15kWH battery system, of which government reimbursed 7.8k. 1.35k USD for entire system, when you'd pay this much for someone to plug some cables for half a day.
If they are insulated properly (lots of roof insulation) it also keeps the heat out. I'm building a house and last week it reached 32c here, inside got no warmer than 23c on the upper floor. I don't have AC installed yet, just HRV.
A lot of it is acclimatization. In Taipei this morning, at 9:30 it’s already 31C and 73% humidity, forecasted to hit 37C by noon. My first year living here this was unbearable, but now it’s tolerable. It’s just summer, not a spurious heat wave.
It’s not different if you’re used to. Heat acclimation is a real thing, but it won’t magically beat physics if wet bulb temperature hits body temperature.
No worries as they'd had their vegemite for brekkie providing all the salt they need to offset the constant sweat. None of this soft modern electrolyte bullshit, just beer dregs on toast.
Depends, In northern NSW, the heat it humid, in the south / west it's usually dry. It gets hot, like opening a oven door, but it's not a wet humid heat that kills you.
I tolerate heat well, I feel very comfortable at 28C but I get cold easily. My sister is happy at 18C and starts overheating at 25C. Not everyone is the same.
I've always assumed there is some sort of "acclimation" period, maybe even related to the conditions you grew up in. I much would rather spend a time outside in -40c (with proper outerwear) than 40c. I'm relatively healthy but I feel like my body shuts down at anything above 36c
My understanding is that full heat acclimatization requires elevated core body temperature for 30-60 minutes a day for several weeks to really kick in and it’s easily lost during winter. Someone going largely from air conditioned to air conditioned building during the summer months may not even build up much of a passive acclimatization.
I don’t do as well in heat so for the summer hiking months in California so I have to do a two week sauna or hot bath protocol, otherwise I struggle really badly during the season. YMMV of course.
Same. There definitely seem to be strong genetic factors (just based on my personal experience TBF). I also notice I adapt substantially after two to three weeks of consistent exposure. But it does have to be consistent - hiding out with AC 24/7 prevents it.
That’s because you pay attention to your body and you’re not in denial. Above 37 degrees, your body cannot regulate itself, and it starts being seriously uncomfortable before that. Going outside for a run when it’s 40 is unbelievably stupid.
I had 40 Celsius today at around 9pm. Middle of the night now and it’s 34. It’s as cool as it’s going to get before it starts heating up again tomorrow. Where I live there are no laws on max temperature in residential housing so the owner (I’m renting) doesn’t have to do anything about it. Never mind the poorly insulated, black slate roof (I’m on the last floor) or lack of AC (I’d have to foot the bill anyway).
Yeah we ve reached stupid levels of weather scare. France did have some extreme temperatures over 42, but 40 is a typical Mediterranean heat wave, not Armageddon
It’s litterally the hottest month of June ever registered in France, beating a 23 years old record. Very typical heat wave indeed.
EDIT: actually yesterday was the hottest single day ever in recorded french history, and it happened in the merry month of June, not August. Truly your typical heat wave.
EDIT2: I was wrong, the record is not actually 23 years old, but… 1 year old, as the record had already been broken in 2025. Can’t wait to get my next dose of very typical 44C temps in may next year.
You don't stay the most cash-rich company by chasing every expensive fad and they've been equally conservative with other "THIS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING" tech fads such as Cryptocurrency and VR. I don't blame them for not rushing to light Billions a month on fire like the other big players; their play always seems to be to let things shake out and then deliver something refined and sophisticated.
There also doesn't seem like any real opportunity for them to Apple-ify this tech (any more than today's announcement). There's lots of rough edges and the underlying technology is fundamentally janky and extremely problematic in Apple's second differentiator of privacy.
Hardly everything in the Apple Vision is in/comes from the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch hardware wise and software wise all you need do use them its called being the last major American vertical computer company left. Light billions on fire OpenAI, Google, were hopeful but got nothing.
What is the name for the literary device that LLMs use where it explains something and then follows with a "pithy" "gotcha" sentence?
> > Atherton didn't have to win. A CEQA lawsuit doesn't need a strong legal theory to do damage — it just needs to introduce enough risk that funders freeze and clocks keep running. The delay is the weapon.
In my opinion, this construct is massively overused by LLMs and is extremely jarring to read. The pithy followup "The delay is the weapon." feels like Year 8 Debate Club and is very melodramatic and cringy.
It must be possible to steer the LLM away from this?
I wouldn't find it so grating if I wasn't constantly reading it. Maybe 5 years ago I would have liked this writing pattern. Same for those diagrams they include.
What it lacks is the effort it takes for a couple minutes to whittle down the writing to the essential parts and bring out the particular style of the author. Even before this wave of LLM stuff started, I knew that it's editing that makes good writing. LLMs are mostly a single-pass process. Maybe it would be improved by having a couple intermediary high-temp thinking stages. the time tradeoff is worth it if it's producing some blog or speech to be consumed by 100s or 1000s of people even if you are only improving the writing by, say, 5%.
To be honest, I don't mind the diagrams when I'm the one prompting it. Other than the fact that it is a waste of tokens, and full of clickable dialogs that waste more of my tokens.
Now that LLMs can produce texts in any form, and of a considerable length, may we please stop bickering about the form, and concentrate on the content? Because otherwise we'd allow LLMs troll us: produce slop to mask where the content is lacking, and have us generate more words about the slop, ignoring the content further.
> Atherton didn't have to win. A CEQA lawsuit doesn't need a strong legal theory to do damage — it just needs to introduce enough risk that funders freeze and clocks keep running. The delay is the weapon.
In my opinion, this construct is massively overused by LLMs and is extremely jarring to read. The pithy followup "The delay is the weapon." feels like Year 8 Debate Club and is very melodramatic and cringy, which LLMs do a LOT.
There are other spots that stand out, but this is the point where I said to myself "oh this is the point where the author stopped "cowriting" and just pasted the LLM slop directly."
As an Australian with a family and 2 high-paying salaries paying a LOT of tax, none of those countries are remotely comparable to Australia.
If you hate taxes and fees, Singapore has a 60% Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty on residential property applied to foreign buyers, on top of an already insane property market. There's huge fines and government intervention into _everything_ and a massive high-stress culture.
Hong Kong is equally absurd for property and has a sword hanging over its head, that falls if China ever makes a move on Taiwan; the inevitable US and global sanctions would decimate HK.
I can get PR in Singapore through my partner, so no 60%. Company paid medical and everything so expat life and no responsibilities. And if I were ever have to have kids, you can’t hire a maid here sleeping at your apartment and you have to clean yourself which is ridiculous. In Hk, SG, Dubai you can get domestic helpers cheaply and they take care of everything
Mate, 3 months ago you admitted on HN that you never get Singapore PR, just admit you want to moan how west is bad. I pay more taxes than you, and that's ok, Australia worth it.
> shell0x 3 months ago | As a white person, I’d probably never get PR too but I think it’s good that they maintain the current percentages, otherwise the country would turn unrecognizable like Germany or France
> And if I were ever have to have kids, you can’t hire a maid here sleeping at your apartment and you have to clean yourself which is ridiculous.
Not sure if serious.
If serious: This is a really weird and almost sociopathic thing to say. I really don't get where you're coming from. It's certainly not the cultural direction I'd like to see Australia moving in.
OK, just seems weird from my cultural experience, and the way I was reading your comment it sounded 'entitled' (likely due to the cultural difference).
Describing it as "pretty good value" bothers me in a number of contexts.
I'm also fine with this never becoming a thing in Australia. Not sure how out-of-touch or in-touch that makes me, but that's how I feel nonetheless.
@Loocid, thanks for saying what I was dancing around.
Its too close to slavery for my liking. Yes they are paid but 2.5k per month is very low for Singapore, they work massive hours, they rely on you for shelter, and are very likely from much poorer neighbouring countries that are trying to support family back home.
The whole power dynamic is extremely exploitable which results in a lot of abuse cases.
The goal that AI-Megacorp CEOs have been pushing lately is "super intelligence" and so if that's where you truly think we are rapidly heading, what's the risk for those of us not hyper-invested in AI? This "super intelligence" (by definition) will be able to understand us both equally well, so all these "prompting skills" people claim sets them apart from people who don't use AI that much will be utterly pointless.
Meta knowingly runs scam ads, they just charge more to run them: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/consumer-watchdog-g...
> Reuters also reported that Meta internally projected in 2024 that it would earn about 10% of its overall annual revenue – or $16 billion – from running ads for scams and banned goods, internal company documents show.
At $employer we're CONSTANTLY fighting fake ads cloning our brand. Their various brand protection features seem deliberately inept and ineffective.